


I hold it in my hands.

by krebkrebkreb



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Love, Outer Space, Responsibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krebkrebkreb/pseuds/krebkrebkreb
Summary: She slept 600 years and now she can’t sleep at all. Responsibility sits heavy on her lungs until she can’t breathe.





	I hold it in my hands.

****Sara Ryder can see the galaxy from her bed. She doesn’t even need to roll over from her back to see the vastness of space and her own face reflected back at her in the glass.

All of the stars and the mysteries contained between them press down on her with their weight. Hundreds, thousands, millions of tiny pinpricks on her skin, each growing indiscernible from the last until it begins to overwhelm her.

Andromeda has one trillion stars.

She can’t look away from the window.

 _Sara,_ SAM says in her head. _Perhaps you might like a glass of water._

 _“Pathfinder,”_ SAM tries again, out loud.

Sara slams her eyes shut and breathes. When did she stop breathing?

Liam rolls over, from his back to his side, and one of his hands finds its way to her belly. He sleepily gathers her shirt in his fingers, tugging gently as he tries to pull her close.

“Sara, why is SAM beeping at you in the middle of the night?”

She lets her body move to conform to his, twisting her torso to get as much of his heat as possible. To drive out the cold of space.

“He’s not,” she says, trying to sound sleepy.

“Your heart is hammering.”

His voice is rough and quiet and she breathes in the sound as it reaches her over the hum of the ship. He is rough and real and _here,_ a fellow explorer of the stars. An earthling with no unearthly mystery in him.

“Liam,“ she starts to say. She has to stop when her eyes open and she sees the vastness of space again.

Liam lets go of her shirt to push himself up on his elbow. He looks down on her with a concerned face, blocking her view.

“Is it ever too much?” The words find their way out of her without consent.

“Babe?” he asks, confusion making him sound sad. “Is what too much?”

“Me? This? I don’t know— life?” She gestures with one hand, wide. Indicating every star and every planet and every person out there.

Liam’s eyes go wide with misunderstanding and he hurries to press a kiss to her cheek before looking her in the eyes again. “You mean us? Are you thinking I’m having second thoughts about us? This— it’s never too much. I wouldn’t be here in the first place if it was too much with you, Sara Ryder.”

His beautiful, masculine panic brings a small smile to the corners of her lips. “No, Liam. I love you. I am not second-guessing anything.”

“I love you too.” He kisses her cheek again, several times, then her temple, then the side of her head as he lies back and gathers her in her arms. Sara lets it happen, watches their reflection in the glass.

“Now tell me,” he says into the loose strands of her braid, “what has the Pathfinder worked up like this? Work itself?”

She exhales.

“Work,” she says flatly. She trails off, then chuckles.

He chuckles too, humorless, then sighs. “I know. When was the last time any of this felt like ‘work’ to you and not just… survival?”

Sara reaches up to touch his hair, seeking the comfort of it. It’s an awkward position but he leans into it, closing his eyes as her nails touch his scalp.

Silence sits with them for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I think— I think I want to be able to give you some definite answer but I don’t know. When Dad died? The first time I realized I’d have to balance my friends’ rations on who I needed mentally sharp for a mission? Who needs more calories because they’re a biotic? The first time I made a decision that cost real lives—“

Liam’s hand on her cheek stops her from speaking, but it can’t stop her heaving, terrified breaths.

“Shh, shh,” he says, over and over into her hair while she shakes. “I have you,” he says.

“I have everyone else,” she whispers.

She stares at the stars, matches them with maps she’s memorized and the Tempest’s heading. Sees clusters and streaks of light she can put a name to. Sees the suns of people she knows.

“Liam, every living soul in the Heleus Cluster is my responsibility and I don’t know if I can handle it. I think about it all the time. The people I don’t know, somebody else knows them. Somebody else loves them. And the kett are killing them right now. Or they’re starving to death while they wait for someone who will never get out of cryo.”

“Sara,” he says, interrupting her, pulling her hand out of his hair to clasp against his chest. “Sara,” he repeats, kissing her fingers. “You’re only one woman, yeah? You’re just one pathfinder. There are others. You’re not alone. And you’ve got SAM, and all of us on the Tempest. And you’ve got me.” There’s a smile in his words at the end, a bit of hopefulness that he can be the one to make it okay.

Space, Sara remembers reading in a book, is big. Vastly, mind-bogglingly big. It follows it up with a bit about an alien being distressed and far from his place of birth. Here, now, looking out at stars six hundred years from where she was born, she kinda gets it. She has never longed more for a sunny afternoon on Earth.

She doesn’t want to drag this beautiful, kind, exceptional man into her distress. She can spare him that tonight.

He pulls away when she moves to kiss him.

“Sara, I know all of your tricks. I know _you.”_ His hand cups her cheek, pulling her gaze to him. “I know you’re the only one with SAM like… _in there_ with you to do the remnant thing, but everyone has responsibilities. We do things when you’re not around to run the colonies and keep the world fed. Keep the kett off our backs. You can trust us. You can trust me. You can sleep.”

“That’s not—“ she begins and finds herself without an end that isn’t a lie. Isn’t it exactly what she had been worrying about, or part of it? “That’s isn’t all,” she sighs.

“Then tell me,” Liam says, voice warm. His huge eyes are open, anticipating.

And she does, about the pressure she feels and the mysteries they still can’t answer. About the worry she has that this will never feel like home to her. The gnawing terror that this was a mistake and all of them, all of their species are doomed.

And it’s almost easy to talk about, surrounded by starlight and the glow of monitors and the weight of his arms.

And by the end the stars maybe aren't as overwhelmingly, paralyzingly heavy.

**Author's Note:**

> I wear an Andromeda Initiative hat with a pathfinder pin on it and I’m not even a little bit sorry for how much I love Sara Ryder.
> 
> thank you for reading♡


End file.
